A golfer usually approaches a hole by first driving the ball toward the green from a considerable distance. Ideally, the ball would bounce and roll into the hole on the first stroke. As this rarely occurs, most golfers settle for trying to place the ball on the green close enough to the hole to sink the next shot with a single putt.
Since a hole may be difficult to see from a distance, golf courses may offer assistance in the form of a numbered flagstick placed in each hole. However, even the location of the flagstick on the green may from a distance be hard to gauge with enough precision to optimize ball placement. For example, if a given hole is on the left rear portion of a green, a drive toward the center may force the golfer to putt repeatedly and earn a poor score. Instead, the golfer may wish to drive the ball slightly harder and somewhat to the right of the hole to avoid falling short or missing the green altogether while obtaining good ball placement.
The golfer's effort may be facilitated by encoding information on hole position in the appearance of some object on the green. The flag and flagstick, being already present and visible for some distance, are convenient choices. Some courses have attempted to encode distance information in the flag itself, using different flags for near, medium, and far hole positions. However, this system requires at least three different flags for each hole and still provides no information on right or left hole position. A convenient flexible system for providing both range and direction information could improve a golfer's game while minimizing course maintenance work and expense.